Complexities Of Vodka

Maybe you could even say 'the complications' with vodka...

Vodka should be one of the easiest thing to find being used in high class recipes for food - but it isn't.

And that is partly because the French ever since the Crimean War tend to tell lies about the fact that they actually do use it in their dishes!

Outside Hediard's Paris.

But what they do is add it in there with other forms of alcohol be it white wine or cognac. They definitely throw it into bouillabaisse. In fact anything that you will find with fennel or anise in it, you will likely find also vodka being slipped in there sneakily.

So - borscht, fish soups, especially smoked fish soups, even 'vodka lemon chicken' - there is such a thing.

Traditionally, vodka is just drunk neat by the Russians alongside pickles and hams and plain bread.

But it is totally excellent in pasta sauces, and in tomato or cheese and herb sauces that you might use on a pizza.

According to the standard folklore, vodka is a 'pure spirit,' meaning it does not have the 'mixture compounds of alcohol' called 'fusel oils' or fusel alcohol - which impart various identifying flavors to beers and wines and whiskies as well. Again, according to the folklore, hangovers from vodka are not as bad as hangovers from other types of alcoholic drinks.

For me the rule is, the better quality the alcohol is, the less problematic is going to be its after-effects and even then you have to be cautious and not silly anyway. ...Which a lot of people are, when it comes to strong drink.

As for 'oils' it has always been my own personal impression that the best vodkas definitely have this 'oily' meniscus surface...

Bloody Mary soup. 
With vodka, obviously.

Drinking vodka or gin or whisky or bourbon (maybe not so much that last one, because it is something you can drink alone) is about who you are drinking with. Either you like yourself and can handle your own company and you are interesting enough and entertaining enough to be with all by yourself, plus a bottle -, or you find someone to corrupt.

The whole process there with the other party, is about the brain effects and these come more successfully from the nose not the mouth or the stomach.

By the time the stuff is already in the circulating bloodstream of your victim, it's not so rewarding messing around with their brain (intellectually) then because that won't really be working properly at that stage!

So the real thing is to get the vodka into your cooking first, and only as a prop and a way to get into their limbic brain do you use the stuff as a drink - an aperatif.

Russian Jane and her
opera gloves.
Man I could take any of these girls
apart like you would not know.
Make your head spin.

Sure sure, you can forget about all of that too, and just make like Trotsky and Molotov and knock back the stuff in shot glasses while crunching pickles and extra-tasty ham.

...I'm doing everything I possibly can to stay away from talking about money right now.

Because silver 'digital dirhams,' right?

Could be. Could be.

Look over there! Look over there!

Don't look here.

LOL

There's nothing going on here. 

I have to make a comment about the caption under the pic on the right there though:

Thanks, Martin. You taught me well. ...I'm pretty sure he was a serial killer too though. But he was a 'professional;' that is, he actually did 'work' for 'somebody.' Those days are gone. There's
only amateurs there now. And they are about to all get their heads kicked in.

And that's a fact.